break a sweat doing something you love!

It has been quite sometime since I made THIS post and I've been thinking about it lately.

We all know life can be hard, marriage can be hard and sometimes you don't want to talk about it!

In the book "Marriage Fitness", Mort Fertel explains the philosophy that you need to "exercise" in marriage, you need to work at it but that sometimes you need to let go or at least not completely focus on the the"hot topics" and enjoy each other.

Trials come. They do, they have or they will. We still need to maintain and strengthen our marriage weather we are having a hard time or not. In his book he talked about a hard time he and his wife went through after they lost a child. They ran from each other. They hid behind work or other pursuits. Then they went to counseling. It was not what they needed. Their relationship was too weak to handle all the issues the counselor wanted to talk about. They needed to get back to the basics before they could face these problems.

That is how he came up with his philosophy of doing things everyday to show your spouse you care and then going on a weekly date and a getaway quarterly.

What has been on my mind lately is basically this. Face up to the hard things, recognize them, talk about them, then focus on enjoying each other, serving each other and loving each other. It is amazing how much nicer talking about the hard things is. Life lessons have to be learned, if they aren't then life will give us another opportunity to learn the same lesson in a different way.

We can help each other and love each other through the rough spots. That is just one reason I love being married. I've just noticed though, that those spots get rougher when we neglect the basic needs of our relationship, spiritually, emotionally, or physically.

I am SO glad I'm married to Zach and that on days that I am so not an attractive wife he still wants to be married to me. :) I am also glad that he is willing to learn right along with me what it takes to make our marriage successful and happy.

What are some ways that you and your spouse work through hard times? What do you love doing together that you both find rejuvenating? How do you assess how you are doing?